Cold Spring Harbor – Richard Yates

The more of Richard Yates I read, the more impressed I become. As with other personal favourites such as Jane Austen and F. Scott Fitzgerald, he repeatedly mines a particular social strata for universal effect.

Yates explores the aspirant American experience, and particularly women trapped by social convention. The effect can be devastating but also, perversely, exciting.

How about this:

 “There was probably nothing to be done about a woman like this. Dying for love might be pitiable, but it wasn’t much different, finally, from any other kind of dying”